FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT COBRA VERDE - PAGE 3

Can art be found in a garage band's beer-soaked groveling? Rock is sprinkled with bands who aspire to a kind of idiot-savant grandeur, who marinate themselves in barfly excess even as they make music that transcends the cliches, that is spiritual and uplifting almost in spite of itself. Throughout what passed for their careers, the Faces, the Replacements and the Mekons sounded like they were falling down even as their music struggled to rise above. In the '90s, the sound of the slack has been defined by the "Slanted and Enchanted"-era Pavement, who gave the impression they were stumbling into their epiphanies, and Guided By Voices, who headlined over the weekend at Metro.

What's the point? That's the question everyone asks, in the back of their minds, every single day. Thursday night at Metro, Guided by Voices attempted to provide an answer. "Mag Earwhig," their latest record, purports to be a concept record about a mundane earwig, a commonplace insect, who eventually finds a way to transcend its infinitesimal existence. As concepts go, it's faintly way-out stuff, but at their powerhouse live show, the GBV members proved that such fantasies are within the grasp of even the most pedestrian dreamers.

Judging by their performance Wednesday at the Abbey Pub, Rocket From the Tombs is not just the great lost proto-punk band of the '70s. It's one of the best bands of the 21st Century too. At least it felt that way for the barely 60 minutes the quintet was onstage. Together for only a few months in 1974-75, Rocket From the Tombs managed to incite a riot of musical innovation that spread from the industrial flats of Cleveland to New York, London and points beyond. The band wrote a handful of classic songs in their brief tenure, but never got around to recording them as the volatile personalities split into two camps: the avant-garage aesthetes in Pere Ubu, led by Rocket members David Thomas and Peter Laughner, and the snotty punks in the Dead Boys, with ex-Rocket Cheetah Chrome on guitar.

When GUIDED BY VOICES' catchy two-minute bursts of Brit Invasion pop, psychedelia, prog rock and punk first filtered out to public, they sounded unique and refreshing. But after releasing three more LPS and a box of archival material, even GbV's offbeat take on classic rock has become a bit familiar. Perhaps responding to that, the band's excellent new opus, "Mag Earwhig," finds leader Robert Pollard fronting a new supporting cast and commanding a harder attack. While "Mag Earwhig" could go farther in its pursuit of new directions, it does boast songs like "Portable Men's Society" and "Learning to Hunt," which are among the most strangely beautiful numbers in the GbV catalogue.

The tones, they are a-changin' at the Abbey Pub, where Irish reels now share space with American rock dissonance. Tucked away in a residential Northwest Side neighborhood, near the corner of Grace Street and Elston Avenue, the Abbey has long been distinguished by authentic Irish ambience and traditional Irish music. The floors are hardwood, the signs are green and the Guinness flows. Yet thanks to Sean Duffy, a lad with a fine Irish name, the Abbey is rocking out. As talent buyer at the Abbey since September 2000, Duffy's job is essentially to convince the man running the show, Patrick Looney, that his surname also doesn't describe his mental state after a performance by a band that Duffy has picked.

It came from Cleveland. No, that isn't the title of some kitschy, cheap horror flick. It's the story of punk rock. Granted, that flies in the face of punk's "official" creation myth, which claims the genre first sprouted in 1976 -- once, in London, where the Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren planted it in ghoulishly garish, safety pin-cushioned youth, and again in New York, where studded black leather blossoms bloomed in the hothouse of...

Movies may not be better than ever these days -- at least not the ones we see in our theaters -- but for anyone who loves the movies of yesterday, it's definitely a Golden Age. With the advent of home entertainment, video, cable television and DVDs, along with those old staples, the film festivals and revival houses, there has never been a better time for lovers of classic movies to indulge their tastes. One of the clearest signs of the new availability of that treasure-load of movie heritage is the now plentiful supply of boxed DVD sets in video stores.

The MC5 risked everything to make great music, even their lives and careers. As businessmen they were epic failures. Now a fresh flurry of ugly business squabbles swirls around the MC5, even as the band's three surviving members are touring together for the first time in more than 30 years. A three-month world tour (including June 11 at Metro) by the DKT/MC5, led by original members Wayne Kramer, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson, was designed to showcase the band's seldom-heard but strikingly influential music and promote a new DVD, "Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5," due out July 6. But it arrives against a backdrop of controversy and infighting, subjects with which the band became intimately familiar in its first go-round.

The price of summer concerts can shake down a wallet faster than a weekend bout with the slots in Atlantic City. But once again, Chicago's music lovers are fortunate to live in a city where there are plenty of low-priced options. Sure, it's possible to spend $128 to witness the dinosaur pairing of Aerosmith and Kiss at the Tweeter Center on Sept. 5, $125 for Fleetwood Mac at the Allstate Arena on June 26-27, or $112 for a dubious Doors "reunion" at the Chicago Theatre on June 24. But who can complain when Erykah Badu (June 27)